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“I’ve been here for 16 years this August,” Doan said the other day, before his team was eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Los Angeles Kings. “It’s been great to my family and (me). I have a 13-year-old daughter, (for her) this is home. Never lived anywhere else. All her friends, their families are all here. This is home for us.

“We enjoy it. It’s something that we hope gets settled.”

The “something,” of course, is the Coyotes ownership situation. When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made an announcement that former San Jose Sharks president Greg Jamison was leading a group to buy the team and keep it in Glendale, the word was the money would be on the table in a matter of “weeks, not months.”

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That was May 7, more than two weeks ago. Glendale City Council took the first step in getting the sale moving Tuesday night, approving a preliminary budget that includes $17 million (all figures U.S.) to be paid to the prospective buyer of the Coyotes for operating costs for the city’s Jobing.com Arena.

While some wonder whether Jamison’s group – which remains anonymous – can put together the money, the bigger question perhaps is why would anyone want to own a team that has never made money since it moved to Arizona in 1996.

“It’s true this franchise has not done well financially,” says Mike Nealy, president of the Coyotes. “If you look back at some of the hurdles we’ve had, it’s not surprising.

“But we’re not that far off in the grand scheme of things in term so of making money.”

At its worst – and the main part of the reason the team was taken into bankruptcy in 2009 – the team bled $30 million a year.

This year, The Coyotes were at the bottom of league attendance figures, averaging less than 13,000 per game. They went eight years in a row without making the playoffs. And until this year, the Coyotes had never won a playoff series.

It’s the team’s run to the Western Conference final that is the source of hope for those looking at the Coyotes bottom line.

“The biggest piece of the whole thing: you do need to have a competitive team that people believe have the potential to win,” says Nealy. “We had some years there where we weren’t creating believers out there.

“Over the last few years, certainly even despite the economy and the uncertainty in the ownership, we have delivered a product that people are catching on to believing in. Believing tomorrow we will be good.”

On the positive side, the Coyotes sold out every home playoff game.

Nealy also changed the business model this season, which he believes the team is only beginning to reap the benefits of. They stopped their massive giveaway of tickets, fearing it devalued their product, and as a result sold 60,000 more tickets than last year.

And over 90 per cent of season ticket holders have renewed, their highest renewal rate since 1996.

But there are problems that run deep, says research Professor Tim James of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

“One of the problems is they don’t have a huge fan base,” says James. “If you go to a game, the home fans are outnumbered by the fans of the road team.

“Phoenix has got a lot of newcomers. They retire here and they bring their sporting affinities with them. The Coyotes are everybody’s second team , not the first team. Unless you were born here, but there’s not that much of a tradition of ice hockey here.”

Then there’s the issue of whether Glendale council is wise or foolish to be spending more taxpayer dollars on the hockey team. The taxpayer watchdogs at the Goldwater Institute may weigh in on the issue. Their legal threats chased away previous would-be owners.

“Where the Coyotes play is meant to be an entertainment district,” says James. “The whole model was building that (arena) as an attractor of people, that it would pay for itself over a long period of time through extra taxation and economic development activity around it. They’ve struggled a bit. The Coyotes never took off. And the (football) stadium is only used for 10 games a year.”

But James isn’t entirely pessimistic.

“The big advantage is this is a growing city, a growing area, getting a larger and larger population,” says James. “I’m sure if (the team) manages to survive, it will have a big enough fan base, as successful as any other franchise would be.”

Nealy says Jamison knows what he’s doing when it comes to taking over the historic money-losing team that will again — despite the playoff revenue — land in the red.

“We won’t discuss exact number, it’s certainly a material amount but it’s not insurmountable,” says Jamison. “But with the lease as proposed and a competitive team, it’s very plausible to be on the other side of that and be in the black.”

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